For some time, I have been trying to bring Atlas readers accurate news from France. Unvarnished, unbiased -- almost impossible. French media is virtually state controlled and little veracity seeps out. The French governement has gone so far as to ban citizen journalists from reporting on violence.

So it is with great anticipation that I introduce a new column here at Atlas. SOPHIE STATESIDE. Sophie Fernand is French, frank, and fabulous. She has written for The Weekly Standard and now she writes for us. VOILA!

We toasted our new collaboration. VIVA THE TRUTH!

Here, Sophie's first column for Atlas:

French nation's confiscated symbols Sophie Fernandez

National Identity became such a tortured issue in France that the
tricolor flag and the Marseillaise recently needed a public
rehabilitation. The presidential campaign's key topic has been
restoring a normal relation between France and its identity, starting
with eliminating the surprising taboo that surrounds the Nation's
symbols like the French anthem and tricolor flag. International
football matches are the one and only occasion you can drag out a
French flag in France without being regarded as a Nazi.

After long
years of existence of this bewildering anathema, Socialist candidate
Ségolène Royal finally evoked on March 23, during a press conference
in the South of France, the idea that "every family should own a flag
and display it in their window on Bastille Day." The day before,
during a meeting in Marseille, she sang the Marseillaise and
underlined it was important for the Left to "reconquer the National
hymn, unfortunately abandoned to the Ultra-Right." Even if the
Republic's symbols are inherently public: "Res Publica," the "public
thing" in Latin, Ségolène Royal needed to pronounce their
rehabilitation in the public sphere.

The anathema on symbols of the French Republic surged into the public
debate on October 6, 2001, only two weeks after 9/11, when football
supporters booed the Marseillaise at the beginning of a France Algeria
"friendship match" at the Parc des Princes in Paris. The whistles
molted into a terrifying "Osama" hummed by the crowd of supporters for
a few seconds, signaling a broader hatred towards the Western World as
a whole. The match had eventually to be interrupted because of the
invasion of the field by young supporters waving Algerian flags.
Sarkozy, then minister of the Interior, had reacted to it with a law
proposal condemning to a 7,500 Euros fine and up to 6 months in prison
for anybody publicly dishonoring the anthem or tricolor flag. This
grim episode marked the end of the national football team as the last
haven of patriotic respect. The national football team was
traditionally considered as a symbol of multiculturalism by French
media who called it "black-blanc-beur" (black-white-arab, "black"
being in French the only acceptable way to say "noir") in reference to
the "bleu-blanc-rouge" flag. Famous French intellectual Finkielkraut
mentioned in an interview with Haaretz in November 2005 that the
national team would be better named "black-black-black". He was right
when he added that if "you make this type of remark in France, you
might end up in prison." In fact, Montpellier's mayor Georges Frêche,
got excluded from the Socialist Party for such a comment two months
ago.

Even the toy trademark Playmobil participated in the
schizophrenia surrounding French identity and its football team,
creating for Germany World Cup in 2006 two toy soccer players, one
black and one white, and this, only for the French team and no other.
What is happening in soccer, French people's main leisure is very
symptomatic of politics. Algerian flags dragged out to celebrate
France were the images of jubilation of Chirac's reelection in 2002,
after having escaped from Le Pen's election, they were exactly the
same as the ones of the national football team's victory in the World
Cup in 1998, the Marseille born best player Zinedine Zidane having
Algerian origins. This rehabilitation of France's symbol was highly
necessary and marks a historic step for the Socialist Party, which
used to sing "Bella Ciao", an Italian partisan song during World War
II in its meetings; but it may be just a posture if we take into
account that Ségolène Royal keeps including in her program the
regularization of all the illegal immigrants, vacating the idea of
Nation of its meaning. French identity being the key topic of this
presidential election, the Socialist Party did not want to let the
right monopolize it. By saying that Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal of
creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity was
"ignoble", Ségolène Royal dangerously distanced herself from one of
the strongest preoccupation of her voters; 58% of the workers being in
favor of it, according to an IFOP survey.

Sarkozy's election made all French people believe that time had come
to recover a clear and frank relationship with the symbols of national
identity, but this glim of hope was short. For his first Bastille Day,
last Saturday, Nicolas Sarkozy invited all the twenty-six European
armies to participate in the parade on the Champs-Elysées. European
Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Portugal's Prime Minister
Jose Socrates and Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani were
among official guests at Bastille day's celebration in Paris. In order
to finish drowning national symbols into fuzzy and warm diversity,
Nicolas Sarkozy organized so-called "concert of brotherhood", starring
German rock group Tokio Hotel, 1960s French rock star Michel
Polnareff, and Portuguese-Canadian singer Nelly Furtado. The
annihilation of French traditions got complete when the new president
refused to give his Bastille Day allocution.

If Sarkozy is not the man, who will cure France?

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THE FRENCH REPORT: SOPHIE STATESIDE

For some time, I have been trying to bring Atlas readers accurate news from France. Unvarnished, unbiased -- almost impossible. French media is virtually state controlled and little veracity seeps out. The French governement has gone so far as to ban citizen journalists from reporting on violence.

So it is with great anticipation that I introduce a new column here at Atlas. SOPHIE STATESIDE. Sophie Fernand is French, frank, and fabulous. She has written for The Weekly Standard and now she writes for us. VOILA!

We toasted our new collaboration. VIVA THE TRUTH!

Here, Sophie's first column for Atlas:

French nation's confiscated symbols Sophie Fernandez

National Identity became such a tortured issue in France that the
tricolor flag and the Marseillaise recently needed a public
rehabilitation. The presidential campaign's key topic has been
restoring a normal relation between France and its identity, starting
with eliminating the surprising taboo that surrounds the Nation's
symbols like the French anthem and tricolor flag. International
football matches are the one and only occasion you can drag out a
French flag in France without being regarded as a Nazi.